ACES ON BRIDGE

At the 1998 Cap Gemini World Pairs Invitational, one of the pairs in contention comprised Krzysztof Martens and Marek Szymanowski of Poland. Martens has recently developed a second career as a coach and writer of some excellent books, which are both entertaining and informative. Meanwhile, Szymanowski is known to be a tricky opponent, and he produced an excellent false-card against the Hacketts, brothers from England who were regular contenders on the Great Britain team for most of the last decade.

After Szymanowski had opened a Polish club with the East cards, Jason Hackett elected to overcall one no-trump rather than one heart, and consequently found himself in two no-trump as South after having shown strong no-trump values, together with a heart suit. Martens accurately selected a spade lead, which Hackett won in hand and played a heart to the nine — and Szymanowski took it with the king! Then he cleared the spades, and declarer, not unnaturally, repeated the finesse in hearts, allowing the defenders to win a second heart trick. Together with two spade winners and three diamond tricks, that meant two off. But note that if East had taken the heart jack at trick two, declarer would have used dummy’s spade entry to finesse East out of the heart king, and would have made eight tricks in comfort. Declarer’s play would have succeeded against a 4-1-4-4 pattern in the East hand, which was entirely consistent with the partnership style.

ANSWER: All answers have drawbacks here. Raising hearts may get you to an awkward 4-3 fit. Rebidding one spade may make it harder to find hearts (since a heart rebid at your third turn would now show real extras). Finally, rebidding no-trump shows the hand type but may miss the best fit facing a weak hand. I prefer the last option, though, since for me a one-spade call would guarantee real clubs.